Saudi Arabia

Shia

Shia are a minority in Saudi Arabia, probably constituting
about 5 percent of the total population, their number being
estimated from a low of 200,000 to as many as 400,000. Shia are
concentrated primarily in the Eastern Province, where they
constituted perhaps 33 percent of the population, being
concentrated in the oases of Qatif and Al Ahsa. Saudi Shia belong
to the sect of the Twelvers, the same sect to which the Shia of
Iran and Bahrain belong. The Twelvers believe that the leadership
of the Muslim community rightfully belongs to the descendants of
Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, through Ali's son Husayn
(see Early Development of Islam
, this ch.). There were twelve such
rightful rulers, known as Imams, the last of whom, according to
the Twelvers, did not die but went into hiding in the ninth
century, to return in the fullness of time as the messiah (mahdi)
to create the just and perfect Muslim society.

From a theological perspective, relations between the Shia
and the Wahhabi Sunnis are inherently strained because the
Wahhabis consider the rituals of the Shia to be the epitome of
shirk (polytheism; literally "association"), especially
the Ashura mourning celebrations, the passion play reenacting
Husayn's death at Karbala, and popular votive rituals carried out
at shrines and graves. In the late 1920s, the Ikhwan (Abd al Aziz
ibn Abd ar Rahman Al Saud's fighting force of converted Wahhabi
beduin Muslims) were particularly hostile to the Shia and
demanded that Abd al Aziz forcibly convert them. In response, Abd
al Aziz sent Wahhabi missionaries to the Eastern Province, but he
did not carry through with attempts at forced conversion.
Government policy has been to allow Shia their own mosques and to
exempt Shia from Hanbali inheritance practices. Nevertheless,
Shia have been forbidden all but the most modest displays on
their principal festivals, which are often occasions of sectarian
strife in the gulf region, with its mixed Sunni-Shia populations.

Shia came to occupy the lowest rung of the socioeconomic
ladder in the newly formed Saudi state. They were excluded from
the upper levels of the civil bureaucracy and rarely recruited by
the military or the police; none was recruited by the national
guard. The discovery of oil brought them employment, if not much
of a share in the contracting and subcontracting wealth that the
petroleum industry generated. Shia have formed the bulk of the
skilled and semiskilled workers employed by Saudi Aramco. Members
of the older generation of Shia were sufficiently content with
their lot as Aramco employees not to participate in the labor
disturbances of the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1979 Shia opposition to the royal family was encouraged by
the example of Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini's
revolutionary ideology from Iran and by the Sunni Islamist
(sometimes seen as fundamentalist) groups' attack on the Grand
Mosque in Mecca in November. During the months that followed,
conservative ulama and Ikhwan groups in the Eastern Province, as
well as Shia, began to make their criticisms of government heard.
On November 28, 1979, as the Mecca incident continued, the Shia
of Qatif and two other towns in the Eastern Province tried to
observe Ashura publicly. When the national guard intervened,
rioting ensued, resulting in a number of deaths. Two months
later, another riot in Al Qatif by Shia was quelled by the
national guard, but more deaths occurred. Among the criticisms
expressed by Shia were the close ties of the Al Saud with and
their dependency on the West, corruption, and deviance from the
sharia. The criticisms were similar to those levied by Juhaiman
al Utaiba in his pamphlets circulated the year before his seizure
of the Grand Mosque. Some Shia were specifically concerned with
the economic disparities between Sunnis and Shia, particularly
since their population is concentrated in the Eastern Province,
which is the source of the oil wealth controlled by the Sunni Al
Saud of Najd. During the riots that occurred in the Eastern
Province in 1979, demands were raised to halt oil supplies and to
redistribute the oil wealth so that the Shia would receive a more
equitable share.

After order was restored, there was a massive influx of
government assistance to the region. Included were many large
projects to upgrade the region's infrastructure. In the late
1970s, the Al Jubayl project, slated to become one of the
region's largest employers, was headed by a Shia. In 1992,
however, there were reports of repression of Shia political
activity in the kingdom. An Amnesty International report
published in 1990 stated that more than 700 political prisoners
had been detained without charge or trial since 1983, and that
most of the prisoners were Shia
(see Prison Conditions
, ch. 5).